Dr. Isabel Pérez-Otaño, a native of Cadreita and researcher at the laboratory of Cellular Neurobiology of the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra, has received a award from the North American foundation NARSAD, the largest non-profit organization among those that distribute funds for the research in brain and behavioral disorders. Dr. Pérez-Otaño's team investigates the molecular instructions of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases.

Its strategy, framed in an international project , is to discover how the pathology begins and thus design alternative therapies to those already existing that attack the disease at its source. "Recentprograms of study reveals that these diseases begin with a failure of the synapses, microscopic Structures that connect neurons and encode information in vast neuronal circuits. Our programs of study focuses on combating this failure, which occurs when neuronal death has not yet begun, so that we could prevent the disease," explains the researcher at CIMA.

"For example, we know that the earliest disturbance in Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, or in neurodevelopmental diseases such as schizophrenia and autism, is the brain's inability to preserve and remodel synaptic connections. The failure of both processes, critical for the creation and persistence of the report, determines the appearance of cognitive defects and report", he says.

Thus, the work of group of research of the University of Navarra has focused on studying the mechanisms that control the remodeling and elimination of synapses. Over the last few years it has been published in prestigious journals such as Neuron and Nature Neuroscience.

Financing of US$100,000

The US-based NARSAD Foundation supports basic and clinical researchers committed to discovering therapies for mental and development diseases, as well as neurodegenerative diseases, both of which have similar symptoms and molecular mechanisms.

The $100,000-funded project presented by Dr. Pérez-Otaño will study how defects in NMDA receptor-mediated signaling interfere with synapse remodeling. NMDA receptors receive and process information transmitted by an excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate. Because of their special properties, they are core topic molecules that encode information stored during brain development or learning processes and report.